愼子

Shènzǐ 愼子

The Master Shèn

by 愼到 (Shèn Dào, c. 350 – c. 275 BCE; Warring-States proto-Legalist of Zhào 趙, Jìxià 稷下 academician)

About the work

A short proto-Legalist treatise in one juan and five extant piān, attributed to the Warring-States Jìxià academician Shèn Dào 愼到 of Zhào 趙. The work was originally voluminous — the Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì lists 42 piān (under Fǎjiā 法家), and the Táng zhì 唐志 records ten juan — but had already been reduced to fragments by the Sòng. The five-piān recension catalogued by the Sìkù is itself a Míng re-compilation, drawn from quotations in the Qúnshū zhìyào 群書治要, Yìlín 意林, Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽, and other encyclopaedias, and is partly inferior to the now-lost Sòng “Másā 麻沙 print” of Chén Zhènsūn’s day. Cross-listed in the Sìkù under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division, although the Hàn zhì placed it among the Fǎjiā.

Tiyao

[The Sìkù tiyao for Shènzǐ is appended to the Yǐnwénzǐ tiyao in the SKQS imprint and is presented here as it stands in that source.]

We respectfully submit that Shènzǐ in one juan, composed by Shèn Dào of the Zhōu. Dào was a man of Zhào 趙. The Zhōngxīng shūmù 中興書目 makes him a man of Liúyáng 瀏陽; Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí 書錄解題 says: “Shèn Dào of Zhào, seen in the Shǐjì — Liúyáng is now in Tánzhōu 潭州, instituted as a county only under Wú 吳 [Sānguó]; it has nothing whatever to do with Zhào, north or south. The Liúyáng claim must rest on something the booksellers said and is meaningless.” So “of Liúyáng” is wrong. A Míng-period engraved edition further has “Dào, also named Guǎng 廣.” But Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 Zhuāngzǐ shìwén 莊子釋文 under “Tián Pián” 田駢 notes “Shènzǐ says: named Guǎng” — so Pián is named Guǎng, not Dào. This is yet another error.

The Zhuāngzǐ · Tiānxià says: “Shèn Dào abandoned knowledge and discarded self, following only what cannot be helped, indifferent to things, and took this for the principle of the Way. He said: ‘Knowledge is no-knowledge.’ He would slight knowledge as something with a wounding neighbour. Solitary and unattached, he laughed at the world’s exalting of the worthy; loose and unbridled, he denounced the great sages of the world. Hammer-and-anvil grinding, rolling with things, leaving aside right and wrong only to escape — neither schooling intelligence nor reckoning forwards or backwards, simply standing tall — he would push and then move, drag and then go, like the swirling wind, like a feather’s spinning, like the dropping of a millstone — whole and without fault, motionless and without excess, never having committed any wrong. Why? Because the unknowing thing has no concern for self-erection, no burden of using knowledge, motion and rest never depart from principle, and so all his life he has no praise. Hence: ‘Reach the level of the unknowing thing, and that is all — no use for sages or worthies; the very clod does not lose the Way.’ But heroes laughed together, saying: ‘Shèn Dào’s Way is no conduct for the living and is the principle of the dead — he has only succeeded in being strange.‘” This shows that Shèn’s learning is close to the Buddhists. Yet the Hàn zhì lists him under the Fǎjiā 法家. Examining his book now, his general drift is to follow what is naturally so in the principles of things, fix one law for each, and abide by it — neither reaching outside the law nor relaxing within it — so that high and low rest in mutual peace, and one may govern in pure quietude. But where the law does not reach, force must come in to even things out by punishment. The conversion of dàodé 道德 into xíngmíng 刑名 [name-and-form, Legalist categories] — this is precisely his pivotal turn, and is why Shēn Bùhài 申不害 and Hán Fēi 韓非 cite him so often. (See the Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì.)

His book in the Hàn zhì runs to 42 piān; in the Táng zhì to ten juan; in the Chóngwén zǒngmù 崇文總目 to 37 piān. The Shūlù jiětí says the Másā 麻沙 cut, in only five piān, is already not the complete book. The present text is also in five piān, but its prose is much abridged — and is again not what Chén Zhènsūn saw. Evidently a Míng-period gleaning of remnants, re-arranged. Note the two sentences “the filial son does not arise in the house of a kind father, the loyal subject does not arise under a sage ruler” 孝子不生慈父之家,忠臣不生聖君之下 appearing twice front and back — proof that this is a miscellaneous compilation that has not had its repetitions removed.

Respectfully revised and submitted, first month of the forty-sixth year of Qiánlóng [1781].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

Shèn Dào 愼到 (c. 350 – c. 275 BCE) was a Warring-States thinker of Zhào 趙 who studied at the Jìxià 稷下 academy in Qí 齊 alongside Tián Pián 田駢, Péng Méng 彭蒙, and Sòng Xíng 宋鈃. He is the principal pre-Hán Fēi theorist of shì 勢 (“positional advantage” or “power-of-circumstance”), and is conventionally counted with Shēn Bùhài 申不害 (theorist of shù 術 “method”) and Shāng Yāng 商鞅 (theorist of fǎ 法 “law”) as the three intellectual sources Hán Fēi synthesized into the mature Legalist doctrine. His original work was substantial — the Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì records Shènzǐ in 42 piān (in the Fǎjiā 法家 division) — and is repeatedly cited by name in the Hán Fēi zǐ 韓非子, Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋, and Zhuāngzǐ (especially the Tiānxià 天下 chapter, which gives the most elaborate description of his doctrine).

The text catalogued here is, however, only a fragment of the original, recompiled in the Míng from quotations in the Qúnshū zhìyào 群書治要 (Wèi Zhēng 魏徵, 631), Yìlín 意林 (Mǎ Zǒng 馬總, c. 786), Tàipíng yùlǎn 太平御覽, and other TángSòng encyclopaedias. The Sòng catalogues already record steady attrition: 42 piān (Hàn) → ten juan (Táng) → 37 piān (Chóngwén zǒngmù) → 5 piān (Másā 麻沙 print, late Sòng). The five-piān recension that the Sìkù editors received is even more abridged than the Másā print and contains internal duplications — proof, as they note, of careless gleaning.

The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore −350, notAfter −275) is the conventional floruit window for Shèn Dào himself, since the surviving fragments unambiguously preserve doctrines and formulations attributable to him; the date of the present Míng-period recompilation (which is what the Sìkù in fact prints) might more strictly be set in the late 16th c., but since every word of the surviving text is genuinely pre-Qín in origin, the older bracket is preferred. Modern scholarship (P. M. Thompson, R. P. Peerenboom, Eirik Lang Harris) makes important use of the larger corpus of Shèn Dào fragments preserved in Hán Fēi zǐ j. 40 (Nán shì 難勢 chapter), the Tiānxià chapter, and other sources, alongside the present recension.

The work is included in the Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì (under Fǎjiā, 42 piān), the Suí shū · Jīngjí zhì, the Táng zhì (10 juan), the Chóngwén zǒngmù (37 piān), Chén Zhènsūn’s Zhízhāi shūlù jiětí (Másā 5-piān recension), and the Sìkù. The Dàozàng preserves a fragmentary Shènzǐ recension under KR5f0009.

Translations and research

• P. M. Thompson, The Shen Tzu Fragments (Oxford University Press, 1979). The standard critical edition and English translation; reconstructs and translates the entire surviving corpus of Shèn Dào fragments (not only those in the present Sìkù recension, but also those preserved in Hán Fēi zǐ, Lǚshì chūnqiū, Tàipíng yùlǎn, etc.). Indispensable.
• Eirik Lang Harris, The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation (Columbia University Press, 2016). New translation and full philosophical analysis; updates Thompson with thirty-five years of intervening scholarship.
• R. P. Peerenboom, Law and Morality in Ancient China: The Silk Manuscripts of Huang-Lao (SUNY, 1993), with extensive treatment of Shèn Dào within the Huáng-Lǎo / proto-Legalist matrix.
• Léon Vandermeersch, La formation du légisme: Recherche sur la constitution d’une philosophie politique caractéristique de la Chine ancienne (EFEO, 1965; repr. 1987). Classic French monograph on the formation of Legalism, with a chapter on Shèn Dào.
• Soon-Ja Yang, “Shen Dao’s Theory of Fa and his Influence on Han Fei,” in Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Fei (Springer, 2013).
• Hú Jiācōng 胡家聰, Jì-xià zhēngmíng yǔ Huáng-Lǎo xīnxué 稷下爭鳴與黃老新學 (Zhōngguó Shèhuì Kēxué, 1998). Sections on Shèn Dào.
• Qián Xī 錢熙祚, Shènzǐ yìzhù 愼子逸著 (Shǒushāngé 守山閣 jīcóng), nineteenth-century critical fragment-collation, the basis of much modern work.

Other points of interest

The relationship of Shèn Dào’s shì 勢 doctrine to that of Hán Fēi is the principal philosophical question raised by the surviving fragments: Hán Fēi’s Nán shì 難勢 chapter (Hán Fēi zǐ 40) explicitly criticizes Shèn Dào’s pure shì doctrine for being insufficient without a co-ordinated fǎ 法 (law), and supplies what the Tiānxià chapter describes — namely, a quietist surrender to circumstance — with active institutional content. This makes Shèn Dào the most interesting transitional figure between the Daoist wúwéi 無爲 ideal and the mature Legalist programme of Hán Fēi.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Shènzǐ entry.
• Wikipedia: Shen Dao; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Shen Dao” (Eirik Lang Harris).
• Wikidata: Q1383558 (Shen Dao).
• Parallel recension: KR5f0009 (Dàozàng).